Michelle Gabel/The Post-StandardPhil Stewart, of Clay, a retired biology teacher, is shown with an axis deer (left) and a pronghorn antelope (right).

After more than 60 years of hunting, Phil Stewart still struggles to answer why it’s so important to him.

“I hunt because it fills a need somewhere in my being that I can’t explain,” said the 76-year-old retired high school biology teacher. “I get a sadness, but a thrill, every time I make a good clean shot on an animal and kill it.”

Throughout his life, Stewart has hunted in this state and Pennsylvania, in addition to Alaska, Canada, Texas and Africa, and for the past two decades he has made an annual trek to Wyoming to hunt pronghorn antelope and mule deer.

“If you’re looking for consistency, there’s consistency in my hunting of pronghorns. I really like hunting them,” he said

His small, split-level home in Clay is full of trophies. Head mounts of more than a half-dozen African animals grace the wall just inside the front door. Walking up the stairs to the living room/kitchen area, there’s a rug draped over the metal railing made from a lioness Stewart shot in Africa.

“We put that out during the summer months and replace it with a bear rug during the winter,” said his wife, Judy.

Downstairs, there are impressive shoulder mounts of a pronghorn, a mule deer, an axis deer and a mouflon ram. Upstairs, his bedroom is filled with whitetail deer antlers and pronghorn mounts. There are also European skull mounts of the lioness, the bear and other animals.

Stewart grew up in rural Pennsylvania. He said he came from a non-fishing, non-hunting family.

“Most of my ancestors were dirt-poor Quakers who were farmers six days a week and preachers on the seventh,” he said.

A turning point was when his parents gave him a .22-caliber rifle when he turned 12. From then on, he began hunting. Throughout his teen years he bagged squirrels, ducks, pheasants, rabbits, upland birds and eventually deer. Throughout it all, he said, there was always one rule.

“It’s always been a matter of whatever you shoot, you eat,” he said. “Bless my mother. She even cooked woodchucks that I shot.”

Stewart attended college and left Pennsylvania, eventually landing a job in the Penn Yan School District. He taught there for 34 years before retiring at the age of 58. As he reached middle age, his hunting adventures were augmented by other pursuits.

During the 1970s, he said, “I had a chance to pursue my mid-life crisis as a race-car driver.” He drove late-model stock cars at Rolling Wheels and Weedsport speedways. However, he gave that up in 1978 because “I couldn’t support a race car and two kids in college.”

And during the 1980s, he ran a fishing charter boat service out of Sodus Bay. His boat was named “Teacher’s Pet.”

Through it all, though, his love for the outdoors and hunting remained strong. In 1971, for example, he and his first wife and their two kids traveled with another teacher’s family and their children for the entire summer in Alaska, living out of a mobile home and tent camper.

“That’s where I shot that mountain goat,” he said, smiling as he pointed to the head mount on his bedroom wall.

And it was in Alaska where he found — yes, found — his .30-06 rifle that he’s used to kill the majority of his trophies in recent years.

“We had just gone through a set of Class 3 rapids and my friend Rod Swanson found it and gave it to me. It was on the edge of the rocks, all beat up and broken and a little rusty,” he said.

Stewart got the gun reconditioned and has been using it ever since. Among his trophies:
“Lots of whitetail deer, mule deer, pronghorns, four moose, one mouflon ram, an auodad (Barbary sheep), an axis deer, a black buck antelope, eight caribou, eight different species from Africa — including a kudu, an impala, a lioness, a gembok, a bushbuck, a couple of warthogs,” he said.

He and his second wife, Judy, who doesn’t hunt, continue to eat all he shoots. She also arranges where and how Stewart’s trophy mounts are hung in the house. She said they haven’t bought meat from the grocery store in years.

“We both like to cook,” his wife said. “Talk about fast food, wild animals are the fastest animals. That’s our fast food. We cook all that stuff 100 different ways.”

She noted their house boasts two 18-cubic-foot freezers that are jam-packed with meat, fish and wild turkey.

“We started borrowing my son’s freezer because we have so much,” she said. “Since August, we’ve already got four antelope, some mule deer and a caribou.”

“We grind our own meat, make our own sausages, jerky and brauts ... and there’s nothing like venison hotdogs,” she said.

This fall, Stewart’s plans locally include hunting turkey, ducks and deer. There’s also a winter trip to Texas planned. One day, he would like to return to Africa.

But the annual two-week trek out to Wyoming continues to be his favorite. Stewart talked about “the tons and tons” of spacious, beautiful public land and the challenge of shooting pronghorns.

He admits, though, that with age he’s slowing down.

“I don’t have the strength or stamina of 14 to 15 years ago. For example, the first moose I ever shot, I packed out the front quarter,” he said. “It wasn’t a long ways, but it was 120 pounds. No way I could do that these days. If I can pack out 50 pounds, I’m lucky.”

Stewart intends to hunt as long he’s able, realizing there’s a lot of people his age out there who can’t.

“I always tell my wife, if I die on the way home from a hunting trip, don’t worry about it,” he said. “ If I die on the way, that’s the time to be sad.”